I've been working on my design lately. It's all in CAD, however getting quite detailed and quite happy with the design. Getting close to finishing the design. I've reached the stage in CNC machining skills that I'm more than confident about machining the parts to make it. I'm quite happy with creating the electronics and embedded code to run the local functions, however the PC software is the component which is the difficult part. I'm not sure how to tackle this one.
I have been thinking of setting up a local micro to control the stepper and peripherals and run self standing, after being downloaded an instruction set. Then having a PC program to convert the pick and place data into suitable format to download to the machine. It's a lot of work and loses some flexibility, so would prefer to use a better PC program if one can be found.